Diabetes is the new health monster

Diabetes is a new pandemic, a disease spreading across continents through the developed and developing world. It’s not even a virus. Whether it hits children, old people or the rich, it is an expensive and debilitating disease that demands continuous treatment until death. The drugs are available but, as is often the case, they are not always available where they are most needed. More important, diabetes is a disease that can be prevented.

“We have nothing as bad as America’s worst, and nothing as good as America’s best,” wise words said to me by someone many years ago, and this principle has stood the test of time. There are certainly many dreadful things in American healthcare, but there are also wonderful services and excellent innovation with a rigorous evaluation for each of them. In my collection of ten classic articles on better value healthcare, eight come from the United States. This is a paradox. Although they have no finite budget and do not have full population coverage, the thinking and the innovation within healthcare organisations such as Kaiser, or universities such as Harvard or Dartmouth, is streets ahead of the debate in the United Kingdom. But let’s not feel too bad as we have nothing as bad as the worst, for example, the Republican views on healthcare, and the millions who are uninsured.